Botswana pledges credit line as SADC funding deadline expires

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By Alex Bell
16 April 2009

Botswana's government has pledged a US$70 million credit line to Zimbabwe,
days after a deadline set by the Southern African Development Community
(SADC) for members to pledge financial aid to Zimbabwe ran out on Tuesday.

A Botswana delegation, led by the secretary for Economic and Financial
Policy Taufila Nyamadzabo, made the pledge on Thursday during a visit to
Zimbabwe. Nyamadzabo said the global financial crisis, which has seen the
purse strings of most government's tighten, was keeping Botswana from doing
more. The credit line pledge has been welcomed, but it is not the cash boost
Zimbabwe's government has been hoping and working for. SADC leaders have
urged African nations to pledge financial aid to Zimbabwe's government and
two weeks ago set the deadline for the country's to add their pledges to an
economic rescue package.

But that deadline passed on Tuesday night and it is still not clear what
African governments have pledged to the package - if anything. SADC members
have been just as unwilling as international governments to part with their
money to assist Zimbabwe, and have merely committed to Zimbabwe's
fundraising and sanction-lifting cause. At the weekend, South Africa's
Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said SADC had
dispatched teams of ministers to the United States and European Union to
lobby for the lifting of targeted sanctions in Zimbabwe and to canvas for
economic support for the government. She said, during an election debate
broadcast on the SABC, that SADC governments would not raise all the money
needed in Zimbabwe themselves, but would try to mobilise it from
international donors and international financial institutions.

Last week, a South African Foreign Affairs official reiterated his country's
willingness to assist Zimbabwe's economic revival efforts, but could not
give figures of the economic assistance South Africa was prepared to offer.

Zimbabwe's finance ministry, now under the control of the MDC's Tendai Biti,
has been fighting to secure financial investment in the country, where
critically needed cash boosts have only been in the form of humanitarian
aid. But international donor governments have understandably been reluctant
to invest in the unity government until real visible change is evident in
the country, change that the fledgling government has not been able to
deliver.

The ongoing farm invasions, which have shown a clear fault line between the
government's leaders, are the main reason why direct financial aid is being
held back. But with Robert Mugabe continuing to condone the attacks that
have drawn international condemnation, it is unlikely that the money the
government so desperately needs, will start entering the finance ministry's
currently empty coffers, any time soon.